Fragments of Inequality by Sanjoy Chakravorty

Fragments of Inequality by Sanjoy Chakravorty

Author:Sanjoy Chakravorty [Chakravorty, Sanjoy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780415952958
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2005-12-12T00:00:00+00:00


Nationalism

The colonized regions of Asia and Africa became independent nations during the two decades after the end of World War II. The American nations had started becoming independent of Europe in the eighteenth century. Since less is known about post-independence social inequality in the American nations (whose independence movements were based on economic rather than identity nationalism), I will discuss only the Asian experience here (with very brief reference to some African experience) by focusing on two large nations: India and Indonesia. There is little doubt that the transition to independence was a major event in recent history. The question before us is this: Did the transition to nationalist independence change the level of social inequality in these nations? The answer, as we shall see, is “very little.”

Indian nationalism began in the late 1800s and gathered steam after the partition of Bengal in 1905.13 The Congress Party, led by Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, agitated for independence, which finally arrived in 1947. In the process was also formed Pakistan, a Muslim majority nation, because the Muslims (who had fallen behind the Hindus under colonial rule) feared for their group rights under Hindu hegemony. The partition of India led to a bloodbath between Hindus and Muslims in North and East India. The foremost task of independent India's leaders then was to restore communal peace and create a new national identity among its polyglot, multi-ethnic, multi-religious population of 350 million. The challenges facing the new leadership were daunting: overpopulation, illiteracy, linguistic chauvinism, religious bigotry, unemployment, chronic food shortages, the threat of a “red revolution,” and inequality of course.

Nehru, a Fabian socialist, approached the inequality problem from two fronts. He focused on women's equality by raising the age of marriage to 15, legalizing widow remarriage and property inheritance, and outlawing the dowry system (which is very much alive even now). He addressed the land-distribution issue by banning absentee landlordism and by allowing actual, documented cultivators to take ownership of the land under their cultivation. However, because these laws ran smack against power structures and norms that were well established, they had virtually no impact initially and little impact in the long run in most regions. As I have shown earlier in this chapter, the distribution of land did become more equal and that should have reduced between-group inequality to some extent. The zamindari system was abolished (as were princely estates) and the heavy revenue burden on peasants was removed. However, the zamindars became urban landlords and continued to realize the benefits of intergenerational “increasing returns.” Meanwhile, the peasants were now taxed indirectly through a series of policy initiatives on urban industrialization that probably created some urban and metropolitan bias.14 As we have seen in Chapter 2, the level of income inequality in India has remained virtually unchanged over the last four decades. Nonetheless, it is likely that between-group inequality levels have declined to some extent, but not rapidly. Within-group inequalities have probably remained unchanged. Indian nationalists were reformers, not revolutionaries (in the sense I have adopted in this work), and their reforms did little to change social inequality quickly.



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